Quotes from John Ruskin

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.

One of the prevailing sources of misery and crime is in the generally accepted assumption, that because things have been wrong a long time, it is impossible they will ever be right.

I desire ... to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.

All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.

There is no music in a "rest" that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.

Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.

Unless we perform divine service with every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.

Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest, which "station in life" each had to leave, with brief notice.

We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

God never imposes a duty without giving time to do it.

The time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction.

Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.

Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their restraint.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself.

Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.